I can't believe how much this month's obligatory shitty horror movie dumped into the doldrums BEFORE halloween rips off stranger things. Just one more nail in the coffin of old-school hollywood!!

no wait i mean IT is fucking fantastic and despite being VERY LOUD about basically everything i loved every single moment of it. But it is VERY LOUD. Henry Bowers is IMMEDIATELY LIFE THREATENINGLY SOCIOPATHIC. Bev's dad is FULL ON CREEPY RAPEY TOWN. Pennywise is literally TWENTY FEET TALL at one point. But it all works, pretty much because the kids are all fantastic. My biggest complaint is that Mike feels like he gets preeeeeeeeeeetty Winston'd in the movie; if they salvage that for the inevitable "adults movie", I'm hoping he gets more to do in the equally inevitable flashbacks to the child actors as well.

Stephen Blythe wrote:There is also the Scottish guy, whose sole purpose is to be gruff but SECRETLY ALSO FETISHISING ENGLISHNESS AND DESIRING TO BE ENGLISH ALL ALONG. When Scotsman: The Gilded Dildo is killed off, in a heroic sacrifice as pointless as it is intended to be emotionally affecting, he sings a beautiful (English? Scottish?) song before blowing himself up. At this point, I was writhing in my seat in absolute ecstasy at how much I hated this film. I feel like my body was empty, a husk, and that my spirit had escaped its chrysalis and was dancing in the air above my seat, vomiting bile and rage.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle was insufferable. If the original was a jerk off fantasy about being a proper Englishman, this one is found dead in its cupboard, hanging with a silk tie around its neck, purple-faced, still tumescent, with a big honking load of autoerotic death semen sprayed across a union jack, spelling out “BREXIT WAS A GREAT IDEA RULE BRITANNIA SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS” in great white looping ropes.

It’s that fucking standard Harry Potter classist fantasy where sad little proles like you or me can imagine being allowed to inhabit a much more elegant, genteel, rarefied world that exists in the clouds above our dreary streets, the same sort of fucking magical Eton that Potter goes to except for spies. One where a true gentleman only allows himself the indulgence of emotion to “shed a tear in private” when all his work colleagues have been murdered, because don’t forget that being a true gentleman is code for “toxic masculinity in a tweed suit.” One where we can all be pulled up from our nothing lives if only someone would see our potential and show us how to fulfil it.

Shame, since there was a lot of over-the-top stuff I loved about the first movie. But, it also had a real hard-right bend to it that I was hoping would be played more satirically in the sequel. No dice.

Mothra wrote:Shame, since there was a lot of over-the-top stuff I loved about the first movie. But, it also had a real hard-right bend to it that I was hoping would be played more satirically in the sequel. No dice.

You're talking about a Mark Millar joint, though. I don't think he knows how to not be reactionary.

I guess I was hoping that his shitty values wouldn't show up in a sequel to a spy farce, and that we'd just get the unrestrained action. Like, the first movie has them murder an entire church and then cause global insanity to the point of killing all world leaders, and it's all done in wacky reckless fun. Was hoping for more of that, with less of the classist and macho bullshit.

First one seemed just chaotic enough to not want to push the status quo, but welp, here we are.

Mothra wrote:Shame, since there was a lot of over-the-top stuff I loved about the first movie. But, it also had a real hard-right bend to it that I was hoping would be played more satirically in the sequel. No dice.

You're talking about a Mark Millar joint, though. I don't think he knows how to not be reactionary.

His personal politics seem to range from Labour to SNP; there is kind of a weird disconnect between the stuff he supports in real life and the fiction he writes. By all accounts he's been very generous with the money he's made; he's made a regular thing of doing "pick the main character's name" auctions and giving the money to a special needs school where his brother works (Dave Lizewski is a real guy's name), and he just sold his creator-owned imprint to Netflix with the apparent goal of donating all the money to fixing up his hometown (and his co-creators seem to have made as much money out of the deal as he did).

If I were to armchair-psychoanalyze the dude, well, it wouldn't take any time or effort for me to do it; he's an overgrown 15-year-old. His fetishization of fascist heroes is the same kind of adolescent mild-transgression-is-funny routine as the constant barrage of buttsex jokes.

He seems like a nice enough guy, and I've liked a lot of his stuff. Watched the first Kingsman the other night and enjoyed it. But he's really been spinning the same wheels for 15 years, which is a shame, because he's got the talent to do better.

Stephen Blythe wrote:There is also the Scottish guy, whose sole purpose is to be gruff but SECRETLY ALSO FETISHISING ENGLISHNESS AND DESIRING TO BE ENGLISH ALL ALONG. When Scotsman: The Gilded Dildo is killed off, in a heroic sacrifice as pointless as it is intended to be emotionally affecting, he sings a beautiful (English? Scottish?) song before blowing himself up. At this point, I was writhing in my seat in absolute ecstasy at how much I hated this film. I feel like my body was empty, a husk, and that my spirit had escaped its chrysalis and was dancing in the air above my seat, vomiting bile and rage.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle was insufferable. If the original was a jerk off fantasy about being a proper Englishman, this one is found dead in its cupboard, hanging with a silk tie around its neck, purple-faced, still tumescent, with a big honking load of autoerotic death semen sprayed across a union jack, spelling out “BREXIT WAS A GREAT IDEA RULE BRITANNIA SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS” in great white looping ropes.

It’s that fucking standard Harry Potter classist fantasy where sad little proles like you or me can imagine being allowed to inhabit a much more elegant, genteel, rarefied world that exists in the clouds above our dreary streets, the same sort of fucking magical Eton that Potter goes to except for spies. One where a true gentleman only allows himself the indulgence of emotion to “shed a tear in private” when all his work colleagues have been murdered, because don’t forget that being a true gentleman is code for “toxic masculinity in a tweed suit.” One where we can all be pulled up from our nothing lives if only someone would see our potential and show us how to fulfil it.

Shame, since there was a lot of over-the-top stuff I loved about the first movie. But, it also had a real hard-right bend to it that I was hoping would be played more satirically in the sequel. No dice.

I watched it and I have no idea what some of this stuff is talking about but the singing mentioned is specifically A John Denver song because the character is shown to be a huge fan during background scenes from both movies not an English or Scottish song. As a whole I enjoyed the over the top action but it was a weaker film than the first. 2 stars movie wise buy I enjoyed it for goofball fun that makes no sense with friends.

Spider-Man: HomecomingDumb, silly, but a lot of fun. It mixes around some messages, but it's a story that my find could follow with a few questionmarks but no gaps. And I would even go so far as to say it was downright enjoyable the whole time.

Wonder WomanWomen, I am so so sorry that all other movies with female leads are apparently so terrible that this one was revolutionary in some sense. I've avoided all post-smallville Superman and BvS, but wow those must be bad if this movie is supposed to be good. Nothing makes sense and nothing is explained. There are false ledes all the fuck over for pointless bullshit (the one that sticks out the most is in the very beginning when a lotta hippos explain to diana that she was sculpted from clay and given life by zeus and all this info on the gods, then the very next scene "she can not know where she came from") that just serves to confuse if you're trying to pay any attention. Plot points happen because they need to, a life of training and Diana doesn't realize she's anything more than an Amazon, one conversation with a guy and she has super jump and strength. There were a few decent humorous scenes, but they all run completely counter to the personalities of the characters involved. Okay this isn't super quick anymore, I didn't mean to get into specific examples but once Diana gets to war things move forward more smoothly around her, just the events as they exist in the universe as a whole are stupid.

beatbandito wrote:(the one that sticks out the most is in the very beginning when a lotta hippos explain to diana that she was sculpted from clay and given life by zeus and all this info on the gods, then the very next scene "she can not know where she came from")

They tell you her origin story, then cut to a scene that does nothing but show us that there's a secret to her origin. There's no "why didn't you tell her the whole thing" or any similar transition, leaving you thinking the scenes went in the wrong order.

No part of the movie made any kind of sense. The villain's plot made no sense. The heroes' plan to stop the villain's plot made no sense. The President's plan...well, okay, the President in the movie is actually smarter than the actual President, so even though his plan is very, very dumb, I gotta admit it's not nearly as implausible as it should be.

Nothing anybody does makes sense. A couple of bits really stretch logic just for the sake of a puerile gag, because Mark Millar. In an early scene, Eggsy jumps in a sewer, because he has an engagement that's far too important for him to wait until he can leave the place where he's holed up (in his hurry he also makes a major fuckup that sets up the plot of the rest of the movie; this is briefly addressed later but he spends no time at all feeling guilty or responsible for getting everybody in Kingsman except himself and Merlin killed -- again!). What is this engagement that's so important he can't possibly be late? It's not meeting his girlfriend's (royal) parents; that's tomorrow; he swims through a river of shit because for some reason he can't be late for his friend's birthday party.

Similarly, a later, labored bit reprises the "agents compete to pick up the girl in the bar" scene from the first movie, because somebody has to plant a tracking device on a woman, and it has to be inserted into her vagina. (Because it will only work if it's inserted into a mucus membrane, for some reason, and nobody can think of any way to convince a character who is doing drugs at a music festival to stick something up her nose.)

There's also a scene where Eggsy uses a watch that, he has previously explained, can hack any computer; this scene is immediately followed by a scene where he can't get into Julianne Moore's computer until she tells him her password.

Also, for some reason when Eggsy leaves town and has a friend house-sit, he leaves the room with his arsenal in it unlocked.

The movie also left me with so many questions about ski lift design.

The cast is great though most of the big names are vastly underused. Jeff Bridges and Channing Tatum are barely in it; maybe we'll see more of them in the next one. Julianne Moore is the highlight as the villain.

Did I say Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore are in this? Well, one thing you will definitely notice about this movie is that Matthew Vaughn really likes the Coen Brothers. In addition to casting a couple of actors from Big Lebowski, there is also a bowling alley in the movie, and the scene that introduces Moore homages both the movie and TV versions of Fargo.

I think a lot of what's wrong with the movie comes down to the tone. It feels like Brosnan-era Bond (but with considerably less Halle Berry); it knows how silly it is and it's winking at you a little bit about it, but it still plays mostly straight. When really, given all the shit that's happening, the tone of this movie should fall somewhere between Get Smart and The Naked Gun. (One of the highlights involves Elton John busting out a bunch of ninja moves to defeat a bunch of guards.) It would be a lot easier to accept the complete lack of coherence and anything-for-a-gag tortured reasoning of this movie if it had some zany sound effects.

Also, there's an early line about Valentine collecting celebrities, and...did that happen in the first movie? It happened in the comic, but I don't remember it happening in the movie. (I was kinda surprised that Mark Hamill was in the first movie but played a character instead of himself; I only read the first two issues of the comic, but I remember specifically that the villain was targeting actors from Star Wars.)

Speaking of the first movie, Golden Circle makes no sense if you haven't seen Secret Service. It does not explain who these characters are, what they've been through, or what their relationship is to each other. A pivotal scene involves Eggsy jogging Colin Firth's memory by threatening to shoot a dog; you'll know why this is significant if you saw the first movie, but it's not going to mean a hell of a lot if you didn't.

Several major characters die in this movie, but it also brings back two characters who died in the first movie. Which is something of a problem, because once you start bringing characters back from the dead, it eliminates the stakes. Sure, a couple major characters die in this one, but that doesn't mean they won't be back in the next one. It's kinda like when Whistler dies in Blade 3 and nobody gives a fuck because he already died in Blade 1 and then came back in Blade 2.

Anyway, I liked The Golden Circle. It entertained me. But it really should have leaned more into being a straight-up spoof, because nothing that happens makes any kind of logical sense.